Sitting In The Fire Of Our Experience
A fire ignited near our Rustic Canyon retreat, and the racket, smoke and ashes floating through the window reflected the scattered states of our consciousness. It seemed fitting that helicopters and sirens would interrupt our meditation, since even the most disciplined meditators are experiencing some fear about the state of the world today. The fire was soon extinguished. But the disruption offered opportunities to meet the fire, feel our response and welcome it in a sacred setting of stillness and trust.
Teacher Profile: Trudy Goodman
Such was the Hollywood-esque setting for the thirty-plus people who gathered in a beautiful home for a weekend vipassana (insight or mindfulness meditation) retreat led by premier dharma (truth) teacher and founder of InsightLA, Trudy Goodman, the theme of which was – no accidents here – “Working with Fear.” Vipassana is the Buddhist practice of cultivating compassionate awareness.
Goodman invited us to locate our physical sensations, to notice their texture, flavors, intensity and observe the surrounding thoughts and emotions. In practicing this present moment awareness exercise, we opened up a little more space in which to step back and perceive ourselves as part of a grander whole. “If we only have a self-referential focus, it’s like looking at the sky through a straw,” she said.
In her own life, Goodman has walked through the fire of her fears many times. Two of these occurred before she received any formal dharma teachings. While in labor, alone in her hospital bed, she recalled: “I remember staring at the white tiles on the wall…then toward twilight they started to turn bluish. Suddenly I was not alone…I was just one link in a long chain of women that stretched forever behind me, and endlessly in front of me. It wasn’t just me in that hospital bed but all women who have ever given birth.”
Another time was when her daughter, then two-and-a-half, had a virulent form of bacterial meningitis and was given a death sentence by her doctors. During a late-night emergency, a team of six doctors and nurses worked to save her life. As Goodman watched, she clearly saw that God was not somewhere else, outside her experience, but manifesting right there in the room (and in the universe) as this “compassionate activity of love and tenderness.”
In 1974, Larry Rosenberg introduced Goodman and her childhood friend, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, to her first Zen teacher, Korean Zen Master Dae Soen Sa Nim. A year later, Goodman attended her first vipassana retreat, where she met the young Western teacher, Jack Kornfield, with whom she now teaches around the country, including retreats at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California.
Trudy Goodman
Although Goodman is an articulate and compassionate teacher, when she taught on her own for the first time in 1993, she was terrified. In zazen (sitting meditation) sometimes you face the wall and sometimes the center of the room. That first time she asked students to face the wall so they couldn’t look at her. She soon overcame her self-consciousness when she realized it wasn’t about her but about sharing the dharma. “This is a fundamental shift that has to take place for all of us before we can open to the larger purpose of our lives.”
During her early career as a psychotherapist in Massachusetts, Goodman worked with emotionally disturbed children and inner-city families while studying and practicing meditation. Her belief that psychology and meditation practice enriched one another led her to found the first Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy in Cambridge.
When her marriage ended, Goodman left the East Coast. She spent a couple of years on the “dharma trail,” writing with Natalie Goldberg in Taos, painting, doing intensive meditation retreats and practicing in Asia before moving to Los Angeles to help care for her daughter’s new baby and her elderly mother (her mother passed on in May of this year). At first, Goodman felt isolated in a city where she had no spiritual or professional connections. “The distances, traffic and isolation forged my intention for the community I wanted to create.” In 2002, she founded InsightLA, a vipassana meditation sangha (community) “where people really listen to one another. Most of the time we’re in silence, but we also take an hour for people to bear witness to each other’s lives and practice. Our spiritual practice is not just our individual thing; it’s relational – how we are with each other. In Genesis, there’s a beautiful phrase, it says to ‘be a blessing.’ When our intention is to connect with community and be of service it makes us happy.”
Goodman’s work with others as well as her ability to sit in the midst of her own challenges have strengthened her compassion and deepened her respect for the intensity of being human. She’s been willing to walk her talk, to practice what she teaches: “to bring sacred attention to experience, to sit with dignity, poise and balance right in the midst of it, with great openness of heart and mind.”
What advice does she have for those who are embroiled in fear during these scary times? “Find ways to love your life, just as it is. See if you can be attentive and friendly toward all the different states of your mind and emotions. The more your heart learns to be steady through the ups and downs, the more self-compassion you have, the more you calm down and see what others need too. When you no longer feel separate and afraid you can reach out freely and ‘be a blessing’ to all whose lives you touch.”
For more info, visit: InsightLA.org.
Joyce Dvoren is a lazy meditator who plans to attend InsightLA’s Monday night sittings in Santa Monica, CA.
By Joyce Dvoren
